Consider Reducing Design Raid Size

I am a fan of this scheme.

Overthere, by way of example, could have a non-progression instance unlocked by Mercenary of~, with raid-scaled chicken, rhino, tiger, and turtle (tethered in the water ) bosses hanging out inside. No insane mechanics, just big versions with .5B hp, raid melee, add Rampage or make their single target dots from the live zone AE instead of single-target (or both those. probably both those). Have them each drop 1 random bit of Velazul armor, 1 empowered diamond, and award 125 Bathezid Trade Gems.

In a perfect world we would have more developer time to have multiple versions of zones, missions and raids. An easy, normal and hard version. For the sake of this thread hard would be the 54 man raid with extra mechanics, mob hp/dps and so forth. The medium version would reduce some of the mechanics and scale down on HP/dps and the easy version would have minimal mechanics but still have enough hp/dps to be noticeable compared to standard zone mobs/named. Rewards would scale based on the version picked and all three would share the same lockout so someone could not farm all 3 versions at the same time. With the current number of developer hours this will probably never happen unless during the design phase they started with the easy version and added onto it to make the normal version and added onto that to make the hard version basically coming to the same outcome they would have already come to with a 54 man raid design in mind. Even then I am not a programmer so this might be significantly more work than it actually appears.

You can think so many thoughts however they cannot be done without massive dev powers which not there.

All changes to how a raid is built up making 2 versions of it doubles the cost

So wanna 5 raids or 9, i wanna have 9.

42 persons raids do not work because guilds built up on 54 persons

This doesn't need to stay true. For example Brogh's suggestion:

Would seem as a low hanging fruit with regards to create more content based on existing design, with limited effort, not to substitute "real" raids, but to add stuff that are like "mega-nameds".

Investing in developing tools to build "mobs as code" or "items as code" could further enable the game designers to make more content, that is also more accessible for different "tiers" of players. The problem with developing content that only a fraction of the players will ever see can be solved by making different versions of that content. Players are obviously very different with regards to what they can do...

How funny. I posted a similar idea a few months ago.
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...nto-expansion-year.249299/page-7#post-3667273

Belkar_OotS
Augur
I am in both a top 10 guild and a struggling mid tier guild. We could make a thesis about all of the differences between the two groups. Different primary and secondary motivators (social bonds, effectiveness, recreation), skill, willingness to learn, skill among coaches, leaderships ability and desire to implement proper penalties, willingness to do independent research etc.

The issue to me, among everything else that I agree with on both sides of the debate, is that each expansion should have some extremely low threshold for completion raid content that caters to those players who are on the bottom half of the spectrum for whatever reason.

The plane of hate and fear, and the Temple of Veeshan raids were hugely popular on my server and helped kick start some low end family raiding guilds and pick up raids, and gave some easy targets for mid tier guilds to farm.

I personally would be all for having the entry zone group named be normal npc with a special capitalized name, then having a "raid instance" trash and all with those same named beefed up for 125% the group mobs damage and 10 times the hp of what the normal encounter would have been under a current model. Use the production time on actual easy raids instead of making every named an interesting scripted event for every level of the expansion. Make the gear the same hme as group gear with a current raid focus and let the low end people have their barely better but worth obtaining gear for low effort.

Sure highly effective raiders could go through and stomp the content with just a couple groups (if that in some cases), but maybe it will help people stay interested gearing up their alts once the main progression is completed.

An issue with doing old raids is they are built around having more competent players and have way more than elaborate tank and spank mechanics which is a skill check for those bottom half of players.

I would like to say
Consider Reducing Increasing Design Raid Size.

Here why lets look at the other game that like EQ had large raid forces and dropped the raid size. What happen was 1st guilds tried to run multi raids to support the guild but in the end the raid team was broken into A team and B team. A team took all the best player and in some guilds B team had a hard time beating the events and fell apart or where upset about being on B team and left to be on an A team in another guild.

After year it turned into a Gear level system the same gear was made with a Item level those that raided the Pick up raids got a down easy version of the Raid got a item level 95 Those that did the normal raids with 20 people got Item level 100 and then those that did the hard mode got item level 105. This sound like a win for all but the truth is it just divides the players even more. Those with Level 105 gear are often very picky with who they group with. They are always wanting to zerg even group content and if you can't keep up they kick you.

As for raiding wit when from a lot of ppl working together to down to the best of the best forming small teams to do the 10 man. Guilds now a days have 1-3 raid teams and each team is it own group. in the end your in a guild but your mostly only playing with the same 10 people. Some players that real love to raid have 6+ toons and are in different raid teams.

The point being is that Dropping the Max raid count didn't bring people together it pulled them apart.

If you want get people to work together then consider increasing the raid size not dropping it.



If you having a hard time keeping people in your guild or on your raid team then you can consider why. Dropping the Raid size is not going to fix the underline issues that are preventing you from being able to beat raids.

Common problems I seen in different guilds:

Poor leadership: If your leader ship can't inspire people to show up to raids and push the raid team to be the best it can be then it will struggle.

Lack of knowledge: Do people know how to raid? it may sound mean but raiding a grouping are different. You need to work together not as single player doing what they want. This means having Alliance rotations, CR rotations, Paragon Rotation, etc. Knowing when to use your burn when to save them. Do you know what skills stack and what ones don't? Is group made up of the right classes (example do you have sham in melee group, Chanter in caster groups) Dps changes a lot based on synergy if your not maxing it out then your losing up to 50% of your dps.

Following emotes: most guild that have a hard time with this tend not to progress. I seen many people that show up to raids and just don't focus and want free loot. An example on a open raid we did a ranger during an event where the mobs where Blue con did 7k dps.

If you want to see who slacking on your raid use a parser. yes it not perfect but it can show you who lacking and you can work with them to find out why and improve. I was playing a healer in ST and we wiped 3 times the other people in the group ask for my spell line up and then had me trade out some spells. the group never died again. It a simple thing but with out some one letting me know I would kept messing up.

Gear: I know people hate doing old content but gear is a must. and Group gear is not going to cut it on current raids. If you want to get a new raid force going let you team know they need to gear up and that may mean doing old raids.

6 month with the lock outs you can do an exp and fully gear a full team. You can then move up to the next exp and spend 6 months. With 1 year of work you can complete 2 old exp and be ready for the new release if you can get people to understand it a means to an end.

If you are not able to clear EOK then you need to be doing TBM until everyone is in full raid gear. to the newest events you can and work backwards but you should be clearing at least 9 events a week. even at 1 hour per event that only 9 hour a week or 3 night of 3 hours.

As you gear up and learn the events they will go faster and you can get down to 9 events in 1 night (4 hours or less ).

Beating your head on a wall doesn't get ppl to want to stick around. if your win events even old event people can see progress and will join your team. if you wiping to event 5 times a night for 4 nights a week and seeing no improvement then ppl with get board and move on.

If your having trouble getting 54 people consider doing open raid on the event you can win. this get people to know your guild and can be a great tool for getting more people. also many of the top raider out their will come to old content raids to help because they enjoy raiding and you can use these people to help better learn the events.

EQ is a game that requires being social get out their and meet ppl and your team will grow. it not a matter of lowering the raid count it a matter of getting to know more ppl.

Problem is also recruitment, there's just not enough players in the game that there once was.

I respect your opinion, and your intelligible response to a complex problem.

Go back to Planes of Power raiding with 72 players for one mob? I'd quite on principal. Plane of Time was awesome so was the Elemental Planes, but seriously some of those 72 nights with lag and mouth breathers waiting around for you to fail.

No. Just no.

If the game's population is dwindling, then guilds will merge. On a peak night on my server there are 350 character with 4 raiding guilds. This includes people that belong to more than one raiding guild with alts in other guilds to raid with.

I had talked with another raider a while back ago, I'll leave their name aside and I've talked with other hither and thither. The main CONSENSUS, is that the game's best days are behind it and that the best players server hop. If your guild doesn't offer up what they want, they move. It's a demographics crunch.

And personally, I'm getting tired of the move around or die approach to Everquest. It's getting old. Click this, move here, do this. Do that. Yea staring at a wall wasn't fun either like NtOV, but the DPS checks sucked back in Solteris and they suck now.

Retention rate is a problem whenever higher end guilds are also experiencing atrophy and take from middle end, then middle end takes from lower end. The thing is there's no lower end anymore to replenish ranks much as used there to be.

Raids are also lagging because of the various complex triggers and so forth. It might be time to simplify raid design and lower player numbers, especially if the lag issues persist. The DPS checks I think are the main problems along with the instanta gib mechanics. Eliminate those, and you eliminate some of the migraines middle end is having. And yea, I hated them when I was high end and was specific in beta feedback that long sequence chains for progression was hypoerbolic.

No more keys, no more obligatory blockers that you need for next expansion. Just good old fashioned good content.

An alternative approach (because I think ideas and solutions are always better than complaints)...

Currently, failure to comply with emotes usually results in blowing up the individual or the raid. Lack of compliance almost always results in a wipe if enough people are missing emotes.

WHAT IF — instead of having emote compliance wipe the raid, make emote compliance unlock boss hp. Raids could look like this:

1) Engage boss. Emote goes out. Three players need to duck, a fourth needs to run to an aura, and a fifth needs to unequip their weapon. If the raid is successful in complying, boss HP unlocks by 5% and the next emote goes out. If the raid misses the emote — tough luck you need to fight for another minute and try again.
2) Guilds that are able to comply with emotes every time will beat the boss in the least amount of time possible. Guilds that suck at emotes may be stuck in a 1-hour fight, but eventually they can win assuming they are able to sustain themselves through the fight.

Essentially, performing the raid mechanics is still required in order to win, but there is no longer a need to comply each and every time in order to avoid a wipe. It also avoids having a “DPS check” in order to be successful as the event can still be beaten by low DPS guilds. While this certainly would simplify raids and make them “easier” ... the top guilds would have an advantage in their ability to beat events at a much faster pace.

sorry for the rambling post....

A big part of the problem for the mid and lower tier guilds is the difficulty of raids doesn't match the order you're forced to do the raids in. If the difficulty ramped up as the raids progressed in order, it would be better than having the 3rd of 10 raids being the first blocker which unlocks number 4 and 5 that are actually easier than 1 and 2. Then raid 6 being tougher than raid 7 and 8 with 9 being tough and then raid 10 being the easiest raid of all. That format just locks too many guilds into the first two raids for far too long and people get bored, aggravated, switch guilds, etc... When the low and mid level guilds lose one of their better raiders, it's a much bigger loss because of how long it takes them to gear up a replacement with the same equipment because they're stuck at what's dropping in only 2 or 3 raids. It also hurts if they constantly keep the same itemization format from expansion to expansion and certain classes never get to see current weapons while other class weapons go to alts or even rot on the corpses.

The low and mid tier guilds might not be able to finish all of the raids in an expansion but constantly locking them into just the 1st couple of raids isn't helping anyone out at all. Sooner, rather than later the number of competent raiders in those guilds will be gone - one way or the other.

keep the raid to 54 to zone at one time but increase the DZ win Flaging/Coin to 72 peeps.
that way if you ever do lower the raid to a number lower then 54 - 72 peeps can still get flagged.

How does that help anything other than adding in 18 alts (or benched raiders I guess) to get flags and coins?

I don't think there's anything wrong with the current system. I think it's a player issue, not a game issue.

People scream for easier content b/c players jumping ship - it's too hard. So they make content easier. Then people scream b/c players jumping ship - it's too easy. So they make content harder. Rinse. Repeat.

Then they offer quests and gear. Gear isn't raid gear. Complain.
They offer chase raid loot. Gear drops too seldom. Complain.
They offer player made raid gear with 6 raid components per raid dropping. Casual and mid-tier cannot complete the raids, they are too challenging. Complain.

See a pattern here? Any developer knows they're going to get burned at the stake by at least some of the playerbase no matter what they do. So the Devs are just going to make the game they want to make.

I am all for giving feedback and tweaking the game. But some people are asking for wholesale change. No thanks. Go play something else and let us die in peace.

This along with making raids shorter altogether. Most people with RL jobs\families cannot raid for really more than 90 minutes in alot of cases on a weeknight. Also, for quality of raiding life purposes, create whatever you need to in order to reduce time sink of a wipe. Make it so that you can try three times in the time it would normally require you to pick up after the first wipe.

AKA get better raid leaders? What takes guild A 15 minutes to recover from, takes guild B an hour. I don't see how this is anything other than a player issue. We've got OOC regen and short reuse MGB, what more do you want?

ever raid guild I been in has around 100 raiders is why just not all on ever night.
Flagging issues is the issue I am trying to fix so Raid Progression can be achieved for raid guilds like mine.

No, and of my game. You want small numbers raids, there are other MMO's for that. As has been mentioned, Everquest has 16 unique classes. SIXTEEN. Your math is bad and you should feel bad.

350 / 54 = 6 raid team possible. To me the fact you have 4 raid team tells me that most your server is raiding and that I agree not much change need to take place. If those raid teams are struggling I don't think it a issue that can be solved by dropping the required # of players.

What made EQ great back in the day was not how many ppl their were but more so how social the people where. People wanted to help each other. If you were an jerk you got blacklisted and could not progress. people helped people That what these raid teams need today people helping. Go to the forms their very few post about how to best play X class. or what tactic to use on X even. Other games you can find video of the event to watch and learn from. But EQ is gotten to a point very few people like to share info and that makes it hard for new players learn improve. I not saying no one share but it not an open as it used to be.

As for the need to server hop I can agree it get old. It would be nice if they changed the chars to a log in server and then after picking your char you then picked your server. That way you can change server when you want to play with friend on different servers. This would get rid of the need for /picks because if a zone if full you could just switch server. They already have cross server chat so I sure if they took the time they could make the change. That is something I would pay for if they said this year rather then a new Exp were focusing on making toons able to play on any server.

Wow already has it where your part of a home server and give you the option to /pick over to join groups. How sweet would it be in /pick brought up a list of server to pick from. and you could hop at will to join groups or open raids.

Just stop trying to come up with ways for YOUR guild that is failing to survive.

Guess what? Unless you do something, a guild where you can't field enough people will keep fielding not enough people, unless they get lucky and a similar guild on their server dies.

Do what you have to do. Get in an alliance with another guild. Each commit 27 people to a raid, split the loot in half, keep at it until you are going well enough to separate. I remember Frayed Knot and Legend of Marr doing that in the distant path on the Rathe, and both ended up as a top 3-4 guild on the server and lived for a long time (I think FK may even still exist).

Do what you have to do and quit trying to drag all the successful guilds down. You can already beat every event every year with 42 people with last years gear if they can remove their heads from their butts and just pay attention.

But also want to point out, reducing the number of players needed will make raids HARDER as it will reduce any leeway there was in how many numbers you have and player class distribution. There is also a basic fundamental floor on healing and damage absorption. You simply cannot reduce the healing/tanking requirements more than they currently are, unless the raids become a cakewalk. So making them "reasonably challenging" makes them nearly impossible for the non-elite.

there is no problem recruiting players to raid. The only problem with raiding guilds is recruiters not willing to work at recruiting.

Isn't your style of "work[ing] at recruiting" nearly universally detested?